CeContentWiz a great tool to create Components for the Windows Embedded CE catalog

If you are a Windows Embedded CE developer, you might be familiar with powertoys such as CEFilewiz and CEDriverwiz that are available on Codeplex. David Jones has created an enhnaced version of the CEFilewiz with some interesting added features, like the placement of shortcuts in folders such as My Documents and Start Menu. It also allows to merge registry files.

For those who are not familiar with Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact development, here is some more explanation on what this is about: Windows Embedded CE is a toolkit provided to Embedded OEMs that you could compare to a box of Legos. The developer will have a catalog of features (OS components, drivers, applications,…) that he will select to constitute his OS, then he will compile the OS, download, debug, … There is a specific set of files with specific file formats that describe a component of the catalog, indicating the toolkit where the files seat, what and how to compile the binaries, where to put the files in the OS image, what type of registry settings to add to the image if the component is selected, what other components should be added by dependencies... It can take some time to manually create your own component (which is very useful if you want to redistribute a feature to someone else or to a customer), reason why such tools are very valuable.